All Things Acupuncture with Dr Allison Marshall and Dr John Langlois Artwork

Full Circle Equine Wellness

Holistic Equine Veterinarian Dr. Allison Faber Marshall together with many terrific guests discuss all aspects of keeping your horse healthy, happy, and sound. We explore aspects of equine wellness through interviewing equine professionals and bringing to light non-mainstream approaches striving for optimum health and performance for horses. We discuss, nutrition, hoof care, supplements, chinese medicine, and many other holistic veterinary perspectives to help keep your horses thriving!

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Full Circle Equine Wellness

All Things Acupuncture with Dr Allison Marshall and Dr John Langlois

July 01, 2026 • Allison Faber Marshall, DVM

0:00 | 1:01:47

Having hosted the acupuncture podcast for Chi University from 2023-2025, Drs John and Allison revisit an overview of acupuncture: What is it? How does it work? What health conditions is it good for, and what does that look like from the clinical view? Enjoy this lovely chat about All Things Acupuncture with a nod to the theories of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine and body balance.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hi, and welcome back, everybody. This is Dr. Allison Faber Marshall, and this is the Full Circle Equine Wellness Podcast. I am a veterinarian in Richmond, Virginia. Um, I am an equine vet, and my practice is limited to holistic medicine, which is chiropractic and body myofascial release, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine, which encompasses acupuncture and herbology, and some body work in and of itself. And my goal with this podcast is to have more and more education for the alternative medicine, for the integrative medicine. So my guest today is Dr. John Langois. Dr. Langois and I teach together at Qi University in Reddick, Florida. And for two years between 2023 and 2025, John and I co-hosted the Courses in the Morning, had a Qi University podcast. And John and I hosted those once a month. You can still go back and listen to those. And those were all things acupuncture. The Qi University decided to pause their podcast, and John and I were having so much fun that we decided to do our own podcast. So welcome, John.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Happy to be here, and thank you, old friend. I'm not that old yet. No, I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Just kidding. You're right. We go back a long way. You and I both trained at Qi 2005, 2006 time, and uh, we've been teaching there since what, 2010? Is that when you started then too?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Yep. So we've are really blessed to get to see each other a few times a year. And there's lots of people that have been mentors to me throughout my career. And Dr. Shea is certainly the top of the list. But it's really wonderful to connect with other practitioners for myself, such as yourself, to kind of validate what I'm doing. And uh, whenever you and I talk, we seem to have a very similar approach to things. And I'm super grateful for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

So yeah, so am I. And it's just lovely to uh over the last 18 years to focus my efforts in the field on traditional Chinese veterinary medicine in 30 years prior to doing conventional medicine with aspirations to do this. I'm just thrilled to be able to have that opportunity to do this.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that because I think that your path through Western medicine is pretty exciting. Like I think all of us who, well, veterinary Chinese, you know, Chinese veterinary medicine is first and foremost veterinary medicine. So those of us in the US had to get started with a DVM or VMD um degree. And the integration is fascinating and super powerful. And I don't know if you have a brief perspective you'd like to share on the integration and how much fun you've had with that before we start talking about what acupuncture is.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Well, it is. It's been, it's been kind of eye-opening in in a lot of ways, in that as again, a conventional medicine practitioner for for strictly for 28 years, I had to focus on reproductive medicine lameness evaluations. And I was able to have a lovely practice in the Ocala area and do international work as well. But then the idea of studying traditional Chinese veterinary medicine and also doing chiropractic or spinal manipulation and having all the disciplines. Now, what we talk about is having a bigger toolbox. So when I get to see an animal, I have so many now greater dimensions to be able to figure out what's going on in every different case. So that is most rewarding. In fact, now in my practice, many of my calls are for practic from owners that maybe didn't get from the conventional medicine approach what they were looking for, or maybe they were looking for some better opportunities and benefits for their horse. So many of my calls now are that way in that they're a little bit not necessarily frustrated, but they're looking for more. And that's where we can offer them more because, again, a bigger toolbox.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

I laugh because I was speaking with a colleague of mine who is now retired in my area named Dave. And Dave was at the state fair for whatever reason, and I had a client that was hauling a horse in from far away, so I could see it at the state fairgrounds. And so I'm chatting with the client in front of Dave. And I said, Well, I said, I think Western medicine has a corner on about 10% of the knowledge. And I think that the holistic stuff that I practice has another 10%, and it just illuminates that there's 80% that we don't know. And we all laughed, and the client walked away, and Dave looked at me and he goes, 10%? That's all I got is 10%. But I think, I think practicing both medicines has given me a huge perspective. You know, like my practice has been limited to the alternative medicine, you know, for 20 years. And it makes me realize that we have lots of people that say, Oh, I don't believe in that, or it doesn't really work, or blah, blah, blah. And I have no right to say anything out there doesn't work unless I've practiced it. So, you know, you and I honing our practices just to this medicine makes it sort of like a residency. You know, we have a lot of experience just in this realm, and we can tell you what works and what doesn't work because we've had a lot of practice in it. And I think it is a very real option for a lot of situations for horses. And it depends, right? It, you know, MRIs are not going to work for an internal medicine kind of, you know, it's not going to tell you what the liver enzymes are doing. And so we we have to understand as veterinarians that there are a lot of tools out there and judiciously refer as I do if I think we have we have some joint pathology. I will refer back to the wonderful lameness practitioners in both my Virginia practice and my Maryland practice. I've got some great vets that I work with. So it is really cool to integrate, and it's really cool to see, I would say, to see the depths of how much Chinese medicine can work. But I will always be a student of this medicine because it is so deep that I will never know it all. That's also a mind-boggling fact.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, and the integration is an important thing in that we recognize the strengths of Western medicine, their diagnostic abilities to be able to understand things from that point of view is so important. And whenever I have a case that I feel like I want to focus on traditional Chinese veterinary medicine, if the opportunity to have those diagnostics, whether it's radiographs or MRI, ultrasounds, whatever that is, it's all complementary to us figuring out what's going on. So I'm always there with the integration of it. And one of the things that I admire about Dr. Shea, who is a traditional Chinese veterinary medicine person and practitioner and a master at it, he has in his university setting opened up to the integration in a huge way that there is much out there that we can put together to try and solve a case.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

It's so cool what he's done. And to watch him grow the university and grow his practice and grow his integrative mind, you know, thought process and see, you know, certainly from him, his dad and his grandfather, as you know, you know, were traditional human Chinese medicine practitioners. And so he grew up steeped in that. I joke with my clients that he knew more in his little finger at six years old than I will ever know in my entire life. And so to have him come into our culture, first of all, learn the language. I there I've tried Chinese. It is really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

So, you know, it's amazing what he has been able to do in being the steward of this medicine truly to the entire Western world. Because what Qi University is now in 20 different countries or something like that. And you know, he's he started in in Florida in America, but his astute balance of business management and understanding learning about how userners think and how he needs to teach his his medicine. That is a very different thought process to what we're used to thinking about. We think about the minute. We're looking for the molecule that is causing the problem in the body. And, you know, Chinese medicine looks at the climate imbalance, you know, the heat or the cold or something like that that's causing the body. So what a huge shift that he's had to pivot and make as a beautiful, astute human in order to bring that medicine forward so that our culture can understand it better. And by saying our, I mean Europe, I mean, you know, the rest of the non-Eastern world.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yes. And and you know, just going back to Dr. Shay, too, is he's a fourth-generation herbologist, and that's his strength. And when you and I both started taking acupuncture, that was our focus. But through the years, I realized how much he does know in using herbs in in a traditional way to be able to, you know, affect clinical cases. And he's very strong on that. And I've become much stronger on it too, only because he mentioned that when we do acupuncture, acupuncture begins the process, but the herbal medicine continues it and extends it for a longer period of time. So I'm all about the herbs as well, as I think you are too. They're just hugely important in us treating the case.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I tell my clients is that if I can hit the nail on the head with an herbal formula, then it's like acupuncture in a bottle. So I use a number of his formulas a lot because I'm because of my performance horse focus. But I did like 20% dogs for the first nine years of my practice. And with all the internal medicine things that dogs have, I had this whole world of Dr. Shea's herbology open up to me. And he makes a fabulous formula, formulary, as you know, to help us all learn those. But they are hugely powerful in fixing things that Western medicine can't fix. I I agree with you. I joke that if I have a gunshot wound, I don't want an acupuncturist, I want a good surgeon. But man, if I have Cushing's disease or kidney failure or in more of internal medicine situations, or really even joint disease. Like I remember, you know, you want you want Chinese medicine because although it doesn't work in 24 hours, it is much more powerful than our Western medicine if us Westerners can just be patient. And even I can get impatient sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 11:02

Yes, yes. And, you know, one of the things that, and this is a little bit hard sometimes for students that are learning traditional Chinese medicine to appreciate, is it is, you know, two horses may have the same Western diagnosis, but a different TCVM diagnosis, meaning that we may have, let's say, a horse that has arthritis, osteoarthritis. Well, in human medicine, that's the diagnosis. Well, in TCVM, it may be three or four different diagnoses, meaning it may involve different organs, it may involve yin and young balance, it may involve excess or deficiency. So when we're trying to establish a diagnosis, it's much more integrative in the concepts of what's going on in the balance of the body as opposed to giving it a name and saying that's the that's the diagnosis.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yes. And I, you know, we think in Western medicine that a diagnosis is something that you then live with. And I think allergies are actually a great example of that. That you know, Chinese medicine doesn't quote believe in allergies after I just said that about people not believing in Chinese medicine, but it doesn't, you know, it it believes that that's a body imbalance that we can rebalance and therefore heal from. And in my experience, that's absolutely true. And although once things become physical, such as osteoarthritis, it's much harder to heal, right? You it's much easier to heal it when if you don't have a ton of calcification on radiographs, it's much easier to heal it when it is at a lesser stage than a very advanced stage. But it's still manageable and tiny. I I remember we used to have a Yahoo chat. I don't know if you remember that when we were first um new acupuncturists and different veterinarians would get on and post cases. And there was a woman veterinarian that had a draft horse that after putting him on herbals, she had pre- and post-radiographs four months later. And his ringbone had gotten better, like the radiographs had improved after four months, which is pretty mind-boggling from a Western medicine perspective.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So Yeah, and you know, we we speak of it the word balance oftentimes and that how important that is. And when you say you have something that's advanced and chronic, yes, it's going to be more difficult to resolve that. But the idea that if there is an imbalance and we catch it early, it's actually almost it is a treatment, but it's also a prevention. And that's something that I stress in my practice that's don't wait till we have to put out the fire. Let's let's take a look and balance the animal, and then we won't have the major, major blaze. We'll have right a spark. Yep. Right. Just a just a small thing that's easier to deal with.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

For sure, for sure. And I I, you know, as we, as you and I were getting together to talk about what is acupuncture, you know, that is a concept. This concept of balance is not a part of our Western medicine. So that's probably the hardest concept for my clients to understand is that the goal is to rebalance the body so that it can heal itself. And acupuncture, as you say, is the is the first step in that. And I would offer that acupuncture needs to be repeated often when things have become that structural, when we have blood work changes of Cushing's disease or renal failure, which is kidney failure, or osteoarthritis, we need to repeat it a lot. I had headshakers, it's hard to fix with any medicine. And my biggest success with a headshaker, he had gone on about two years. I want to say he was maybe 11 or 12-year-old thoroughbred. And man, we did him once a month for a couple years, but we licked it. And uh it it just it took a long time because when we think about head shakers, we go, oh, he started a head shake. There's other things that cook below the surface before we see a grand clinical sign like that. And that's what needs rebalancing, which is a tough concept.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

And again, that's the challenge for for students that are learning is to is to not hook, hook into that Western mind that all headshakers are the same or all diarrheas are the same.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Well said.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

We look at a lot of different things. We look as what is their age? A uh a diarrhea in a young animal is totally different than a diarrhea in an older animal. So we have to look at them from, again, this point of balance and look at the organs, what they're doing, look at um the extremities, what they're doing, and just totally holistically look at them and incorporate not just needles, but the herbs, but maybe some body work, but maybe some food therapy as well, and some exercise and uh and management of the particular animal. So it's a again, a hugely holistic approach to looking at a particular case. So we just don't say, well, let's let's put some needles in and that will resolve it. It's a it's a comprehensive look at the animal.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

No doubt. And I I think that's where acupuncture can get unaccepted, is people go in for one treatment and they don't feel a lot of effects other than the fact that the needles hurt. And so they say acupuncture doesn't work, whereas it it really hasn't been used properly. And so I think that I'll I'll speak out for Dr. Shea's training at Qi University. When I went there in 2005 for my training, I thought, oh, I'm gonna learn the stifle points and the hawk points and these points and the gut points and all the things. And and really that's you do learn those, but every acupuncture point has got seven different indications. And that might be, you know, tail pain and you know, whatever. They're they're very different, seemingly maybe disconnected indications. So they might revolve around the lung, but they might have other uh help it might help other things as well. And so we learn those points. But the big deal is we learn the balance, and we learn that just as you say, there are a number of approaches in order to take care of what is out of balance.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Yeah. And it's so, you know, I I I think that out there in the field too, you'll find, and this is coming again from a from uh someone that has learned the medicine. And as a faculty member, I'm teaching students all the time, as you are uh at the Qi. And there's a lot of times when they come through and they get their education, but many, many years pass and they don't really get the chance to renew and re-revive that education. And you'll find a lot of times that each case gets six needles and that's all it is. And um, the results certainly are not going to be like we would if we're doing it in a deeper dive. And so that might be the reason why they say, well, it just didn't do all that I was hoping it would do. Well, it does have something to do with the level of education and and the earnesty in trying to uh approach traditional Chinese medicine again from a comprehensive look.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

No doubt. So if you're sitting on an airplane and the person next to you says, You teach acupuncture? Well, what is acupuncture? Like what is your pat answer? Do you have a good shtick?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Well, you know, I can give you a little bit more formal answer to that and just say that acupuncture is an applied stimulation at discrete or specific points in the body in order to create a therapeutic effect. And what that means is we have these points, acupoints or points, or acupuncture points. They're all have the same meaning. And what these things are, they're like communication holes. In other words, we understand that energy moves through the body in major highways and minor highways. And we have 12 major highways. So along these highways are these communication holes where we can actually put a needle into it's called an acupuncture point and create a therapeutic effect. And what we do as practitioners and scholars of TCVM is to say, what is it when we put that needle into that hole? What happens? Why does it have a therapeutic effect? And so we have to kind of look at those holes and say, well, what is it about those holes that create this effect? And we know that, and I want to go back just a minute and say that the scientific look of acupuncture now is so much better than ever before. And because there's been so many studies to do to actually understand what acupuncture is. So if we look back in 1972, there were about 200 articles that were written about worldwide about acupuncture. And in 2025, there were close to 3,000 articles written with the major countries that have done these articles, or come the United States, China, and South Korea. And so we have a huge amount of information now that validates that acupuncture actually does what it does.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

And you're speaking of human acupuncture when you talk about the human acupuncture.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

And you know, one of the strengths about Dr. Dr. Shea is that he's all about the research and giving evidence-based medicine, meaning, do we have a scientific reason for what we're doing? And more and more and more we're we're witnessing that and saying now, when I do my medicine, I'm not just putting cookbook points into, I am actually basing what I'm doing on research that's been done, scientific research and clinical studies that are peer reviewable, that say, hey, for this particular problem or diagnosis in TCBM, this is what we have shown in our trials works. These points, this amount of stimulation, blah, blah, blah. And that's that's that's where we're working now as opposed to just putting needles in.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, and I think it's fascinating how science in general is opening the doors to, I heard it said really well the other day, and I can't remember the term, but it isn't energetic science, but they're realizing more and more, kind of through quantum physics, through the study of fascia, through sort of our bioelectrics, how much that's integrated. And really that's the realm in which acupuncture excels is this plane of life that is really difficult to study scientifically. So I think some of those studies in the very beginning set out to prove whether or not it worked through the lens of science, and now we're understanding that it doesn't work like Western medicine. It doesn't, it's very difficult to double blind a needle. So we have to study it in different ways. And not that that works and Western medicine doesn't, or it's not a black and white, it's all these beautiful shades of gray of how does it work? How does it help us understand the body physics better and biochemical things better? And how do these holes, these acupuncture points, actually stimulate hormone release? And how you know, how does that work? There was a great book that I read called The Spark in the Machine. I don't know if I ever told you about that, but it was written by a guy. I think he's either Welsh or Irish. He's a British Islesy. And maybe he's Australian, something like that. But he's good. He's a really interesting dude. And it talks about how if you look at acupuncture points, many of the strong ones are around centers of ossification. And so he takes acupuncture points and looks embryologically at how certain tissues are continuous from an embryological standpoint, or there are certain tissues that have the same root in our embryology, in our fetus, and therefore can be stimulated similarly with acupuncture points. And I thought that was fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Very much so, yes. And you know, even from a Western perspective, we we have been able to scientifically document that these acupuncture holes or points, they have, you know, a lower electrical resistance. They have a higher level of electrical conductivity. So the we're not just putting a needle somewhere. We're putting it into a prescribed point when we know that there's a high density of nerve endings, we know that there's a lot of vascular supply, we know there's lymphatics and mast cells and all kinds of things that are specific for this particular hole that we're putting into. So we appreciate that, yes, it does communicate with the fascial planes, which are throughout the whole body. And we could have a whole discussion about, you know, the fascia. And one of the things that I found most remarkable when I was learning about acupuncture is they had an electron microscope of a needle being put into the fascia, into the muscle. And it showed that the fascial planes actually r uh encircled the needle and it created almost like a volcanic look to it. Um grasping it. And we call it the needle grasp because you and you and I both know sometimes we put a needle in and we want to take it out. And the body says, nope, you can't take it out that easily.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

That's quite scary when you're a baby acupuncturist.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yes, it is. It is. Is it gonna break or what's gonna happen?

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Like, how am I ever gonna get this out?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

But to know that the body actually welcomes it in the sense that it it ties up and the fascial planes again lead into neurologic communication, even up into the brain. And so now we're talking about neurotransmitters, endorphins, and serotonins, and all different types of substances that get released that create the effect that we see. Again, immune modulation, pain relief, so much more. All now is understood in a very good way. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

It's pretty fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

It is. And I just I'm I'm so thrilled and to have this, again, this toolbox to be able to have a case call and say, listen, we've we've been trying for a long time. And again, my I did better than you did, ha ha ha, with my head shaker. It only took me six months. But again, it was establishing the right diagnosis. And we get the diagnosis right, same way if you went to a hospital, you would like to know that the diagnosis is accurate and correct. Right. Same way with us. If our diagnosis is right, then we can proceed with a therapeutic plan, have the appropriate needles andor herbs andor foods or whatever it is. Now we can work on that diagnosis to be effective.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Well, and we think about a diagnosis in situ, like in like as it is. But the other beauty of Chinese medicine, which we should explain, that Chinese medicine diagnoses by looking at the color of the tongue, um, which sounds bizarre. And there are different areas of the tongue that correspond with different organs of the body, how they figured that out 5,000 years ago is amazing. And then it also takes pulse qualities. So we take the pulse at the base of the neck in the horse, and the human acupuncturist will take it at your wrist if you tend to if you go in for human acupuncture. But those tongue and pulses can change throughout the course of treatment, meaning I might treat a horse once or twice or three times, and it might be after that third time I come back out and we have a different pattern. So the beauty and the elegance of the medicine is that we are treating what we see every day. I have people say, Do you want the x-rays? Do you want the MRI? Do you want the blood work? And I've learned that my forgetfulness is my superpower. So every day is a new day for me. I like to come out and really get a vibe on my patient without all of that input. Like it's it's great to integrate, like it's great to know, well, this is a Cushings diagnosis, or we have a tenatal ligament problem, or something like that. But it's also beautiful just to be very pure and see what the body balance is telling us every morning of every treatment so that we can tweak things a little bit. I have the cutest, most well-managed fjord pony that you've ever seen in your entire life, named Sarah, which is short for triceratops. And she has anhydrosis, but she also has insulin resistance, and she's had some stomach ulcers and she's had some left front lameness. And I've been seeing her for probably, Barbara, if you're listening to this, you'd know it's probably two years, and used her as some case studies and some teaching uh examples. But every time I go, sometimes she's got heat from her stomach stuff, sometimes she has a spleen qi deficiency from her insulin resistance. And it's it's a it's a balance and it's kind of like Christmas. You kind of wonder what you're gonna see every single time. And it's a it's wonderful to have the tools to adapt to the nuances of change as you peel the layers of the onion.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, and that's it, taking those layers off. And that's something that we educate the owners a bit and say, yes, what I did last time may be entirely different than what I do this time. And that's because things are changing and we are peeling off layers, and now we have instead of this particular symptom in a diagnosis, we have another. And yeah, it it's hugely important to follow what we see in any given day.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

No doubt, no doubt. And so for a discussion as to, you know, maybe that's what we we determined what acupuncture is, is the stimulation of bioelectric areas in order to rebalance the body. I think we kind of said that. And then the the next quest is, you know, how does it work? And I remember Dr. Shea saying my very first day of acupuncture school in 2005, I do not know why this works, but I know that it works. Yes. And uh, I've quoted him many times because I I think that's part of the fun of it, right? Is that you you cast your needles into the wind and um and you see what happens. And some patients respond really quickly because the imbalance was ready to be rebalanced, and some have got a lot of layers in order to be rebalanced. So I don't know if we can, after the 3,000 studies that we're doing, I'm not sure we could even say how it works, other than it stimulates those areas to rebalance. I don't know if you've got a better thought about that.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Yeah, and some well, some of the the earlier studies that were done, you know, lameness is a huge part of my practice as it is with yours, musculoskeletal conditions. And there's been a number of studies. One was experimental where they actually stimulated the bottom of the foot with a with a mechanical screw to create a little bit of discomfort. And they measured that um acupuncture was tremendously helpful in resolving the pain. And but what they found out was that the levels of endorphins in the body were significantly increased. And that gave us the appreciation that when, and we all know about endorphins and pain, or at least we've heard about that. So when you do do an acupuncture needle, endorphins are released, and when the endorphins are released, then the pain is modulated. So there's some great studies that support that. So that's scientific evidence that for pain conditions, we we know that that acupuncture needle is going to do what it does.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

For sure. And I remember read you know, learning about studies 20 years ago that were done way longer than that, that a needle into a trigger point, a needle into a spasming muscle will release that trigger point, number one. And I also remember a study saying that two needles put randomly in the body do not transmit radio waves. But if they are put in the uh the ends of an accuracy or along an acupuncture channel, such as the bladder channel, which is very long, then they will transmit radio waves. So somehow Chinese medicine has figured out the pathways of the bioelectric. And so when we say, Well, how does acupuncture work? It's almost like there's no answer for that. It works in so many ways that I'm not sure the human brain is capable of putting all that together in one answer.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

Well, that's where the magic of the Chinese medicine actually comes in because way back we talked 2,500, 3,500 years ago, they didn't have a really good appreciation of the neurologic system or even many of the organs in the body, but yet they were treating neurologic conditions and they were treating gastrointestinal conditions, they were treating asthma and so forth, and didn't really have an appreciation of of the of the structural part of it. And that's that's unbelievable that they could solve a neurologic case without even understanding the nerve system.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

Isn't that the same thing?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

So yeah, so there is magic in the medicine in that, yes, we're we're we're doing electrical pathways, we're stimulating the the brain. And one of the studies that I saw was they actually had electron micrograph of the of the brain after needle placement and the areas of the hypothalamus and the cortex that just lit up from this needle placement. It kind of said, Wow, that it's just more than just putting a needle in. It has an effect throughout the body and particularly to the central nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. And I love talking about the I'm I'm a neurogeek for sure. Neurology is kind of my thing. I think it's fascinating to watch a horse move and look at what is what gate we we see gate abnormalities with at least 50% of our sound horses, right? So what is discomfort or pain or lameness, if you want to go to that extreme, and what is biomechanics or neuromuscular or weakness, you know, those are all on the continuum of a different color. And when I took, when I was asked to do some teaching about fascia, and I thought, oh geez, I do myofascial release with my adjusting. I need to learn more about this. And I had, I bought a bunch of books. It seems as though Europe has done a lot more fascial work and studies and trying to learn what this ubiquitous yet elusive tri you know structure is in our bodies. Nerves travel at 50 meters per second, fascia travels at 1500 meters per second. So to think about the fact that our acupuncture needles are affecting the fascia, even if we're not poking into a nerve, you know, certainly we are enervated everywhere. But I think, you know, they were proposing fascia as actually the big transmission system of our bodies. And that is a fascinating concept when it comes to thinking about what acupuncture is doing.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Yeah. And when we talk about how, how, how far do I put my needle in in any situation? But we're always going into the vascial plane, I would say. And so that's that is going to stimulate that in every time we put a needle in. And yeah, and and you know, on the neurologic side, I recently had a case where a baby was born and it stood up, and the hind uh limbs were oscillating up and down. I call it the bouncing baby now because I'm hoping to present it as a case. And it just bounced up and down, continuously, only in the hind libs. Everything else was fine. The baby was normal in his head, normal in the front limbs, but wanted to bounce behind. And I got three or four different Western diagnoses, and I said, heck with that. Yes, that's good to discuss, but I've got to affect this animal. So I did acupuncture and herbal, and we're about 80% after four months. So that's amazing, I don't necessarily need to have that Western diagnosis. I have to be able to create the effect. And so I don't know that Western medicine would have offered anything else for this particular case, and that's the reward. But something something else that I I wanna I wanna bring about just because we see so much of this, and we are trying to decide oftentimes what to do with it. And the two cases I'd love to mention are are EPM and Lyme's disease. We find that these two diseases are very prevalent as far as practitioners go. They're often asked to treat it even though they don't even have the diagnosis. The diagnosis is tricky because we only have a blood test to be able to run, or perhaps in the case of EPM, we can run a spinal fluid test and correlate that with the peripheral blood. But in general, we don't have a good diagnostic approach to these. So you get asked, I get asked, well, what could it be Lyme's disease? And that's any type an animal takes the wrong step or has a has a bad day, it's got Lyme disease. So for us, I don't even need that name and I don't need EPM. What I need is what's going on in the body and how can we affect that. And oftentimes we're gonna get rid of the Lyme disease or the EPM through the balance.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

You're gonna do the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

But however, if if these are actual cases, which again, if you talk to the experts, these are relatively rare clinical cases compared to what we feel like could be clinical cases out there. So when there is, yes, we we might need some heavy-duty medicine to kill the parasite. We might need some other medicine pharmacologically to help. Absolutely. But we are so often asked to to treat these problems even before we have an understanding of the diagnosis. But we need to rule out so many other things, and TCVM offers that rule out in a good way.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

No doubt. Remember learning, and this is important for our listeners to know that one thing that Chinese medicine does not do well is parasites. So my dog still gets heartworm preventative. And I have decided that flea and tick treatment is way easier from a Western perspective. I there's just not much that treats parasites from an herbal perspective or acupuncture. We really need something to kill worms and young things. And so, you know, that's important to know, right? And so often when there is a sp suspicion of EPM, I feel as though I take that approach. I think I say, let's rule it out and let's treat with whatever your regular practitioner or whatever you and I decide to do, let's rule that out and then go forward from there. I had a whole run of cases, again, 15, 20 years ago, that would come to me and say, My horse was diagnosed with EPM, he got 30% better, and now we'd like you to treat what's left. And I started feeling like a lot of those horses actually had some underlying cervical issues and some neck issues. And I thought, maybe the EPM meds actually just kind of decrease some inflammation or some low-lying things. Which they do. Right. And so you uncover other things. And so it is a tricky rule out. There's no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah, and I think you're right. And, you know, sometimes if you're treating uh animals with for like Lyme and you're using tetracycline or monocycline or whatever, those drugs have both effects and side effects. And so the effect might be anti-inflammatory. So when they say yes, he's better, but we really didn't have that disease in the first place. What we have is an effect from the medication. And really then we look and say, well, what is the root of the problem? That's where we we choose to go in TCVM is what's the root? What is the imbalance? What where are we there? And yes, as far as the parasites go, there are really some good herbs that kill parasites, but they don't kill in the same way that pharmacological medicines do. So oftentimes I will say that let's get the heavy guns out, get rid of it if we know it's there. And then we could use the herbals as a preventative because they will kill, but they'll also balance the body so that this particular situation won't be set up again.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

Well, and you you can augment the immune system with Chinese medicine like nobody's business. You know, there's no immune system booster like getting the body back in balance. When you think about the general flow, I love how Dr. Shea talks about energy needs to be flowing through our body and mostly through those acupuncture channels, which he describes as highways. So if you have a wreck on the highway and the energy is not flowing, the entire system is affected on some level. So getting the immune system, you know, really moving again is paramount to, you know, when you think about many horses are going to test positive for EPM. More and more are testing serologically positive blood work-wise for both EPM and LIMES. So, how do you rule out an active case? It's it's pretty difficult. And I think it's I am really grateful for my perspective using Chinese medicine that I can look at a lot of different clinical signs and go, well, it could be this, it could be this, could be EPM, could be Limes. Let's let's rule out what's most, you know, most obvious and let's make sure that we cover our bases as we move forward. And I think that having this extra toolbox, as you say, which is really astute, is really powerful in helping me look even more globally. And that's why I would say Western medicine has about 10% of the answers. You and I with our specialty has got, we're not allowed to say that. You and I with our focus on holistic has got another 10%, but there's 80% we don't know. And so much is response to treatment, I think. We we try really hard with radiology and blood work and MRIs and CAT scans and blah, blah, blah. But we try really hard to diagnose, but you got to make sure we cover all the bases.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Yeah. And I think even going back on that, when we when, and I I've had this with large farms where we may have clinically something going on in general, and it what that is, maybe it's let's say EPM or LIMES. And there's been studies to say that, yes, even a high, high titer to in in in each one of those cases, there's no correlation even between a high titer and the incidence of clinical disease. So, you know, in some circumstances, they say, well, on this particular test, if it's one to 4,000 or more, we're gonna call it the EPM and then treat it. And again, that's still not an appropriate way to diagnose EPM. It has got to be done differently than that. And the key is to rule out what else is going on in the body that could give us these signs that we're calling EPM.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yep. I think as humans, we really love those definitive things, right? We really love okay. And even clients like it too. Of course. We want to put it in a box because it's easier. That's right. So it's it's amazing to have a different perspective of a sliding scale of health, I think is kind of how you and I are able to look at a lot of different things now.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yeah. And it's very rewarding because, like I say, we can look at something from a level of the biomechanics of the body. We can look at it from a level of the energetics of the body. Simple things. And one of the things that I I love to do is do a long inquiry to the owner about, you know, what's going on. I spent a lot of time in getting trying to get them to tell me everything that they know about their horse in this particular case that we're discussing. And to take that and then to take that physical examination and then use our acuscan and go through the channels, look at the chiropractic aspects of the balance and whether there's any restrictions going on, to be able to put all of that together and then affect it is just, I could say, very rewarding. And um, we have many, many good outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Yeah, awesome. And many, many good outcomes. You know, it's really I I was a really big Winnie the Pooh fan when I was a kid. And, you know, I don't know if you if anybody out there's a poo fan, you know, when Tigger gets introduced to the group, Tigers like, Tigers don't like that, or oh, Tigers are great at that. And so I kind of laugh because I think, well, what is acupuncture good at? And what is acupuncture not so good at? I think that acupuncture, and I'll expand that into Chinese medicine, can be applied to so many things. That's another question that I would get asked randomly on an airplane, is that you know, there are things like such as metabolic disease. I think acupuncture does a great job at the more common metabolic diseases that we see, which would be Cushing's disease, potentially some thyroid or metabolic issues, or pre-laminitis, hopefully, you know, once they get to laminitis, it's hard to treat, but acupuncture can do a really good job with that. Just like you talked about with the the studies of the the pain in horses and the endorphin release, and that's a really important part of the treatment.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

But uh Yeah, no, I I think that that's you know well said that you know when we get asked to to to look at something, we just look at it from a from a much more broader broader perspective than I would say on a whole organism perspective. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

And I I think that many of us who practice acupuncture on horses, we do do a lot of performance because that's what we use horses for. You know, most of dogs can. And limp around the house and lay on the couch, such as my friend behind me here, and not necessarily have to be athletic, but not only do horses have to maintain soundness, but then they have to carry our bodies on their backs. And so our use for them is quite a bit of performance medicine. And, you know, I should say you are giving a lecture soon on reproduction in horses, correct? Are you doing that in the fall?

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Y Yes, I have um a really cool clinical case where there was a young animal just uh she was had a baby at four and then went three years barren and with the highest degree of Western approach in the finest clinic in in Kentucky, and they were unable to get this animal pregnant for three years. And it was like they finally threw their hands up and said, you know, I I don't have a silver bullet for this. I don't have any, we're not able to do. We've done hormones, we've done surgery, we've done everything we could do, and we can't get this animal pregnant. So they said, Why don't you try traditional Chinese veterinary medicine? And happened to be my client. So we did, and I did six treatments and herbal, and we bred that horse on one cover and is pregnant and had a baby, and now is bred back on a 30-day cycle and is back having another pregnancy. So just a great testimonial to yes, we can we can really affect things. And I love the reproductive because that's where a lot of my my beginning practice was. So to work with the babies and creating babies and the moms to me is just huge.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

It's really exciting. There w there still is an acupuncturist in the Richmond, Virginia area near my practice. And back when I did the little 20% dogs that I did up until 2013, I would he would end up referring to me sort of inadvertently because his specialty in humans was in fertility. And I don't I I had to have had a handful of two handfuls of women come and say, Well, I figure if Keith could help me get pregnant, you could probably help my dog.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

So it, you know, pregnancy is the luxury of the body, as they say. So it's really important to get that rebalanced. Pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Yeah, and and looking at making a presentation at our international conference in the fall, I did a lot of look at, you know, in humans what acupuncture has done for infertility worldwide. And it's just tremendous. And the understanding how in in situations where the they may be seeking alternative ways within vitro fertilization, um, in in really in third world countries where a lot of the medicine is not what it is here in the States. And um, it's amazing what acupuncture has done to augment regular Western approaches to infertility worldwide. It's just it's huge.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Mm-hmm. Pretty cool. And I I've really enjoyed I would say what little infertil or what little fertility I've done, I think that diet is huge. I think that, you know, the herbal stuff is is huge. It I'm I'm noticing for myself and I'm trying to listen to health podcasts for myself. And it's kind of amazing you talk about worldwide, you know, how worldwide we're having sort of a human infertility issue. And it it does it does beg the question. I think I I heard, you know, 25% or 33% of young people now are infertile. And it does beg the question of what are we doing to our environment that is no longer sustaining good food. You know, I have my thoughts about that, not to start an entire thing.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

No, it's a big part. Yes. So a lot of the toxicities that are out there are the um the ability to afford good quality foods or weaning. And you know, you and I both know that in particular when we're when you were doing your dog cases, if I see one and I don't treat the dog hardly at all, but if I've got a skin problem in in the dog, I I number one, I've got to change the diet before I even begin to think about what medicine I might do. So it's hugely important. And we teach that it's one of the five pillars of traditional Chinese medicine. And I do an intro to food therapy to get the veterinarians involved with you, you you don't know how much you can affect the animal by just moving that food in a way that balances, meaning, let's say your animal is hot. Well, we know the foods that are cooling. Right. Why not feed them? Right. On a daily basis. The horse is hot. He's having problems sweating, and they're on a diet that isn't supportive for what would balance it. So that's food therapy is hugely important in our toolbox.

SPEAKER_01 48:39

When I took my herbal class in they they lump dermatology and oncology together, and they had a little bit of food therapy in there, and they said for cancer or skin, the best thing you can do is to get the dog on a healthy diet. That cancer loves carbs. So if you can remove carbs completely, then you'll starve the cancer out. And what a fascinating concept that, you know, our Western, at least our American diet, I'll go there, is very carb heavy. And we, you know, you kind of walk through the grocery store and go, how do people eat all this?

SPEAKER_00 49:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

And I don't know that there's any food left in here.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Right. When we look at two, you know, out in our clinical cases, you know, metabolic disease in the horse you mentioned is very prevalent. And most of the owners are pretty tuned into the idea that diet has a huge part of that. Certainly, we don't want to be given sugar on top of uh of an insulin problem or other metabolic problems. So when that is it present itself, they're all over the idea that I've got to modify diet. But diet modification happens in almost every clinical case, if you look at it. Absolutely. Whether it's a diarrhea or it's a lung problem, there's ways to help support that animal doing what it needs to do to help itself heal itself by model modulating the diet. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

And, you know, when you think about the fact that a carb overload is probably the the reason that the diabetes happens, you know, or the insulin resistance or whatever, you know, that is from carbs in the first place. So the food imbalance probably creates a lot of our from our perspective, like what you and I are trained to see. I see things very differently now. And I have modified my diet since 2008. I'm constantly modifying my diet to kind of try to tweak my health and it's hard. I love ice cream, but man, that's the the gut killer because it's dairy and it's cold.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

So Yeah, and it produces all some phlegm and mucus and things and damp. So yeah, I think that, you know, I like the idea that if you understand your constitution, perhaps 80% of the time, if you eat appropriately, and then you can have 20% of playtime.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

Yep. Yep. That's exactly what I say too. So you mentioned the five pillars of Chinese medicine. Do you want to go over those?

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Well, they are, as we mentioned, acupuncture is at the forefront. That was the one of the original looks. So acupuncture. Yes. And then herbal medicine is in our a practitioner that studies acupuncture, doesn't necessarily go through that. But if you want to have uh greater depths in your ability to practice than herbal medicine, and there are five different herbal courses that a protect practitioner could take, and they relate to the various five organs that we know in Chinese medicine, and that's the lung and the kidney and the heart and the liver and the spleen. So each herbal module follows that. Then there is the food therapy we discussed, which goes into those things creating balance from a yin and yang perspective and from an organ perspective, and then the concept of excess and deficiency. So we have to integrate that. So we have the food therapy, and we also have Twain, which I'm a very strong proponent of, which is an ancient form of traditional body work. And it actually was the predecessor to modern uh chiropractic medicine. So it's it's out there and we we use it, and the the how it differs from regular body work on massage is that we use traditional Chinese principles and diagnosis to affect it on the body to create that balance that we're looking for. So twain is hugely beneficial and really good for those animals that don't tolerate needles very well. So we can use acupressure in a twain type fashion, or we can move energy in the body with our hands. And you know, how much does it cost you to bring your hands to a particular case? Right. Nothing. Right, right. You don't need six different instruments, you need your hands. So it's a great way to be able to learn how we can affect. And when the students come to study it, they're just amazed how much the animal responds to their handwork. And then the fifth pillar is an exercise like uh qigong or tai chi. And I keep asking my horse to do tai chi and it is it it won't do it. It just won't. So it's for us to do to get ourselves energetically bound so that we're in a good place when we're treating the cake.

SPEAKER_01 53:15

That's perfect. Well said. I love that. So there's five pillars of Chinese medicine, and that's the that fifth that qigong is really only applicable in humans. You said that very well, but I just wanted to enunciate it again. So yeah, I I remember you saying, I remember, I remember thinking to myself, I took both my veterinary spinal manipulative therapy, which is uh one of the terms for chiropractic, I took that and acupuncture both in 2005. And then I took a non-vetinary myofascial release class in 2012, and I integrated those two. So I thought, that tweenaw stuff, there's I don't need tweenaw. I'd already do everything like that. And I remember you say you telling me, I remember a lot about what you tell me, but I remember you telling me about a case that was really had some bilateral shoulder tightness, and you found the tweenaw to be more effective. You did acupuncture on one side, you did tweenaw on the other, and you found the tweenaw to be much more effective at alleviating that shoulder stiffness. And then in 2016, when Qi University started offering a master's degree, and you needed 28 credits for the master's, and I already had like 20 or 21 of them just from all the courses that I had taken and the teaching and everything, I thought, well, I'll go do that. I gotta take Twina. Okay, whatever. And holy cow, it is magical. Like I I incorporate that into my adjusting every day. And I think that's part of why my adjustments hold a whole lot longer because I can go deeper with both the myofascial release and tweena. And I think Twina is, as you said, the the Chinese medicine version of chiropractic, but also it does a lot of myofascial release when you think about fascia in general. It's it's really affecting the body at the fascial level for release, even better than chiropractic does for sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:02

Yeah. And it's like it's absolutely remarkable again when students come in and whether they're just trying to, as you were, uh fulfill, you know, obligations to get a degree and they get in there and they start doing it. And I remember one one particular group, and there was a uh like a looked like a scarred area over the shoulder. And I looked at it and then I said, Well, you're probably not gonna be able to do much with that. And it just because, you know, that's been there, done that, it's a scar. And they said, Well, you know, heck with you, Doc. We're gonna go to work on this. And they improved this thing 80% with their techniques.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

And they were like, in one session, wow, that is so neat. In one session, you're saying. Yes. That's fantastic. I remember going to a dressage barn close to Charlottesville, and there was a lovely, sweet working student there who had what looked like was probably her childhood horse that was an older pinto of some sort, probably a paint, quarter horsey kind of guy, and hit one of his legs from his hawk on down was all the same size because he had obviously, you know, avoles the entire front of the cannonbone on some fence or something like that. But it was just all big one thing, big thing of scar tissue. And I got excited about that. And I told her, I said, if you massage this and work at this tissue every day, you can really help that. When I saw her again four months later, it was almost gone. Like it was just, it was incredible. And it is really fun to be able to teach our clients things to do for situations like that, that they can continue to improve their horse's mobility.

SPEAKER_00 56:30

Yeah. And when I finished my my tuna class, I for the first six months or so, I would always say, okay, I'm done with my my acupuncture and spinal manipulation. Um, so here's some tweenaw for you to do. And I did that for about six months. And then I finally said, you know, why don't you just do it while you're doing your treatments? And so now I do a lot more. And then I also offer it to the client to say, and you know, how many times have you had where you've offered a technique to a client to do? They say, No, I'm not doing that. They all want to be involved with it in the dealing and all want to have the team effort.

SPEAKER_01 57:09

Correct. I I get a lot of people say to me often, will say, So what stretches can I do to maintain your work? And it really, you know, tail traction is a big one, a very gentle tail traction. But like it is the most of what I am teaching them falls under the category of tweena.

SPEAKER_00 57:28

Yeah. And I remember when I was in veterinary school, they said, Don't pull on the tail. Really?

SPEAKER_01 57:33

I don't remember it's such cool stuff.

SPEAKER_00 57:35

Yeah. Very good.

SPEAKER_01 57:37

Yeah. Well, thank you for joining today, and thank you for rejoining, I should say. We are the dynamic duo after all.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

So Yeah, I thoroughly enjoy working with you and in this in this uh mode, and we'll continue to do as we find interesting. You know, I I had done done another podcast about a year ago or so, and one of the things we put out there was what is your particular interest? What is the specific case that you have that you're frustrated with? So um if I don't know if you have anything set up on that, but it would be a good way to kind of get some feedback out there and get some ideas too, that wow, we have three or four people that are talking about this specific problem. How can we address that? And that's what we've done in the past is give it a go ourselves or invite a special specialist in with that discipline to say, okay, come on, let's all sure, let's all do that. And and we, you and I learn a tremendous amount through that process.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

It's so fun. It's so fun. My last podcast was the owner of MagnaWave. It really helped me understand PEMF from a veterinary perspective. And so I I love getting the more specialists in. The problem with soliciting feedback, John, is that I am not so great with email. I try to train my clients that they need to call me or text me. And I am not, I don't have a staff and I don't have the the a good way to manage that. If I had people working for me or with me that could filter some of those things, but I I am not physically or emotionally set up for a deluge of of email. Yeah, not a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 59:12

I hear you, but you can you can get it in your everyday practice, and you do. And meaning you're out there and you're having a particular case and you say, Well, I've got you know free three stable mates that are having this issue and so on. It all comes to you based on what you're seeing out there. So yeah, I hear you. We we we strive for a simple way of going and quiet way of going oftentimes. So I I get that part. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 59:36

Well, I'm thinking, and I shouldn't say this on our podcast probably, but I asked Dr. Shea when I started this last september. Well, we started this last September. Would he come back on and talk about herbology? And so maybe the three of us could organize something for the fall and get him on here and really talk about the Chinese herbs and and how those are arranged. I always love hearing his stories about how he grew up in China and didn't see a light bulb till he was 13 and had to walk an hour each way for school and they walked home for lunch. And, you know, it was just I love listening to his his story, so maybe that can be a part of the world. I agree with you too.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

And then you and I talked uh maybe in the fall too about having a conversation about CBD because it was it's out there everywhere and there's not a lot of good knowledge. Yes. I mean, not a n knowledge, but uh oftentimes people are are in the dark about it and they're hesitant to get involved because they don't know the quality and this and that. So I think that would be a lovely spend an hour and talk about that. And we have I have a special guest that we can bring in that's way better than I.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:40

Super, I would love that. I would like let's get that organized. We'll uh summers are busy, but and uh now that you're a Rhode Islander, maybe you have a little more time to do those kind of things. So Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

Well, I'm looking forward to that. I still want to see some cases here and there, and I still want to teach, so that's all there. But I'm really loving right now, it's gonna be a high of 80 today, and that And that's gonna be not 95 with 95% humidity.